US warns India to ‘plan and prepare for war’ with Pakistan, China

New Delhi: Expressing a possibility of future conventional wars
along India’s northern borders, a US think-tank has warned India to
‘plan and prepare accordingly’.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who is in US,
hinted at India for stoking unrest within Pak. “We will not be able to
see peace within if we do not find peace on our boundaries, on our
borders with our neighbors,” she said.

According to a 70-page report titled, “Airpower at 18,000: The IAF in
the Kargil war”, in the Carnegie Endownment for International peace:
“the Kargil War vividly demonstrated that a stable bilateral nuclear
deterrence relationship can markedly inhibit such regional conflicts in
intensity and scale—if not preclude them altogether.” READ: Full report on Airpower at 18,000: The IAF in the Kargil war

“In the absence of the nuclear stabilizing factor, those flash points
could erupt into open-ended conventional showdowns for the highest
stakes. But the Kargil War also demonstrated that nuclear deterrence is
not a panacea. The possibility of future conventional wars of major
consequence along India’s northern borders with Pakistan and China
persists, and the Indian defense establishment must plan and prepare
accordingly,” the US report said.

Referring to a retired IAF air marshal, Carnegie also underlined: “In a
thoughtful enumeration of the diverse conflict possibilities that could
confront Indian security planners in the next decade, a retired IAF air
marshal in 2007 listed as being among the most plausible of those
possibilities an extended border war with China, with little likelihood
of nuclear weapons use; a shorter and more intense war with Pakistan
entailing a very real chance of nuclear use—unlike India, Pakistan has
never proclaimed a nuclear no-first-use policy; a simultaneous war with
China and Pakistan operating in collusion; and a prolonged
lower-intensity war in Kashmir against both Pakistani regular forces and
indigenous Kashmiri insurgents.”

The study also highlighted some of India’s military shortcomings
including the ‘poor test of India’s air warfare capability’ during
Kargil war.

“The covert Pakistani intrusion into Indian-controlled Kashmir that was
the casus belli laid bare a gaping hole in India’s nationwide real-time
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability that had
allowed the incursion to go undetected for many days. It further brought
to light the initial near-total lack of transparency and open
communication between the Indian Army’s top leaders and the IAF with
respect to the gathering crisis,” it said.

The report also pointed: “Despite the happy ending of the Kargil
experience for India, IAF’s fighter pilots were restricted in their
operations due to myriad challenges specific to this campaign. They were
thus consigned to do what they could rather than what they might have
done if they had more room for manoeuvre.”